...it's round here somewhere.
Seriously, here's a disclaimer. On this blog, I draw my own interpretations, publish my own sermons, and ruminate on the state of the Church independently of any establishment to which I'm affiliated. There are statements contained herein which may be wrong. Please correct me so that I can learn from this.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Could we perhaps try to move this away from what is running perilously close to a sniping match, and try to be more constructive. I, too, find it curious that there seems to be an inordinate focus on the hierarchy and virtually nothing on the numbers on the faithful. But this is not unique.

What do we have in common here, and is there any ground for cooperation and intercommunion between the AIC and the other jurisdictions?

He makes very good points: one that is pertinent to the article in question, but also in the general scheme of things. When are the usual people in the pew sought out for advice for the church? When does the opinion, experience or understanding of an "ordinary" (no such thing) parishioner get considered?

In Britain, the government of a Parish is usually made by the PCC (I gather that in the U.S. they call this the Vestry Committee) so the day-to-day running of the Church is dealt with by an elected body.

But what role does the ordinary parishioner play in the Church? These are the folk at the coal-face of life. These are the folk whose charge it is to go into the community and live Christian lives in a world which, quite frankly, would rather they didn't. Theirs is the greater persecution, since they inhabit a world that is not cloistered away from corruption and spiritual attack. These folk come to Church regularly to find spiritual refreshment and rest, sanctuary and security, hope, health and happiness, as they devote their lives to God. Yet when are they ever heard by those whose job it is to serve them? Frequently within their own parishes, I hope, but on the global scale of things about the direction of the Church, in describing their needs and calling for consistency, very seldom.

At the Reformation, the majority of the faithful wanted to retain the Roman structures that provided them with the certain knowledge that they were in church. They were ignored by those who wanted to impress the new doctrines upon them. Okay, so the majority of the laity aren't academic theologians, but if the Church has done its job and served them by teaching them to listen to Scripture and Tradition, then they will know when something is amiss, as did those affected so drastically by the schism from the Roman Catholic Church.

And similarly now. The focus as to what happens to the Church seems always to lie at the feet of the bishops. They have authority to guide and govern the Church, but when things go awry, as the Anglican Communion has, and the bishops speak on their own doctrines after capitulating to the Zeitgeist, what does one do? It is to the priests to whom the faithful turn for guidance, and to the bishops that the priests turn for authority.

There are many parishioners within the Continuum who are after the same thing - the honest and true worship of God in the Catholic Faith uncorrupted by fate, fashion and feelings, and the majority of churches within the Continuum offer just that. Yet are they the ones being kept apart by the politics of the bishops?

I suspect that the majority of the traditional followers of the Church of England are actually Anglo-Papalist in their affections, but do not have the ear of any Anglo-Papalist movement, nor the education to voice their concerns in the way that the hierarchy would hear. Many are being misinformed by liberals who peddle a epistemological solipsism of doctrine, and individuality of worship, effectively an intellectual opium to dull their minds to the actual Truth.

If the people want to be heard then they must seek out the language that people will hear. It is not enough that there be a knowledgeable spokesperson, but that each Christian should have the education to know their need, the need of their society and how the Church is failing to provide that need.

Yes, bishops and priests have authority in matters of Doctrine, provided that it is the correct Doctrine. Thus those in Orders must be respected, but their decisions made on behalf of the whole Church must include the voices of the parishes if there is to be consistency. His Holiness is the servant of the servants of God, the focus of Catholicism, as long as he does actually serve those servants of God (which the present Pope is doing magnificently. He listens, as did his predecessor). He will only do this by listening to those who have to engage the world in a harder struggle than those who have the shelter of Holy Orders. Even the Pope is outranked by the Catholic Faith, yet it is that same Faith that we have to carry with us, within each of us, into the world. Let us trust the authority of priests and bishops, but temper that trust by educating ourselves carefully in the Doctrine that Our Saviour gave us. You don't need a Ph.D for that!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

...at least that was how Oliver Cromwell wanted to be painted. This is one of the few times that I would feel like concurring with Oliver Cromwell, since the man stood for everything which I reject and against much of what I embrace. Why else would I, a committed Catholic have a picture of an arch-Protestant on my blog.

Yet whoever Oliver Cromwell was, he was a human being. I regard him as being misguided and the lead conspirator to regicide, but what of Mrs. Cromwell, and Richard Cromwell, his son? They loved him. But you see that Oliver Cromwell was a human being, fallen, broken, a sinner, one who makes other people's lives a misery, one who makes still other people's lives a joy. I also agree with him on another respect - he spoke of Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, and there is the Truth!

There has been much debate on Anglo-Catholic Central about persons such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu who have done so much to work for the liberation of the oppressed, and have now started preaching liberal doctrines on homosexuality. Clearly Archbishop Tutu has left the orthodoxy of the faith in pursuit of his understanding of freeing the oppressed, a calling that indeed we are all commanded to follow. Does that mean that now, Orthodox Christians must close their ears to anything that Archbishop Tutu says?

Also I note that there is a new cartoon of His Holiness, the late Pope John-Paul II, celebrating his life. to my mind it seems to be more of a putting of the venerable gentleman on a pedestal. In showing him as impossibly good, it makes him less of a human being. that's not to say that through him God did not achieve some truly remarkable feats of liberation, but rather we seem to focus less upon the Divine Operator and more upon the instrument of His operation.

The media worldwide paints pictures in black and white, people are either angels or demons. Indeed how often in the media are rogues seen as loveable and saints as evil, tainted beings. Paedophiles are irredeemable, our young people are all yobs and vandals, Moslems are reactionary and vengeful, and Anglo-Catholics prissy, gay, self-haters. Rubbish. No human being is just one abstract description.

No-one is allowed to be human anymore. No-one is allowed to fall without just damnation from the media. The career of English comedian Michael Barrymore is still struggling after the body of Stuart Lubbock was found in his pool in suspicious circumstances. Like the Evil Queen, or Captain Hook in a British Pantomime, it's as if we need a hate figure. Even Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are human beings, they have qualities of goodness within them even though their hands are covered with the blood of thousands.

What also of homosexual couples who are constantly being demonised by some Christians and Christian societies? The Bible is clear that those who practice their homosexuality are sinning. This sin does infect society, all around us in ways that we truly do not always know or understand. And yet if the feeling that one homosexual has for another is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, then is there not love within that feeling? And why should the homosexual be singled out in this? It is because their condition leads to a temptation that is accepted in modern society, and thus is not acknowledged as sin. However, the sins of each one of us that we too refuse to acknowlege infect society just as plainly, just as vilely in the same way.

This all comes down to making judgments upon others. The only person whose heart we know best is our own, and our judgments of others are impaired because we are not the person whom we judge.

Truly anyone who teaches that homosexual practice is right is not teaching the doctrine of Christ, but so is the one who preaches damnation upon any human being. St Paul says "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."

Does this mean that I am pro-individualism since I am advocating that we should judge only the actions of ourselves rather than the actions of others. I don't think I've said that anywhere. We are free to be the person whom God intended us to be, but that means responsibility; "rights" mean "responsibilities", and the right not to be judged means that we should not act in a way that will cause people to judge us. If we persist in sin, even without knowing it, then we endanger our relationship with God as St. John tells us: "[Y]ou know that [Jesus] appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him." Our lives are not our own and consequently we must live as a community in supporting each other in the love of God, despite the crippling infection of sin.

Again, on the strength of St John we cannot have priests or bishops who practise homosexuality for "Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous."

However, sinners that we are we have to live with this fact: we are all worthy of being demonised, because we all act like demons in our accusations of others and in our own persistance in sin. (Remember Satan is "the accuser").

Archbishop Tutu is a sinner, and yet still a potential saint and I will always measure his words up to the Canon of the Catholic Church. What he says that concurs with the Canon, I shall know it to be the truth. What he says that is contrary to the Canon, I shall reject it. I shall remember that he has helped thousands by his example and by his tireless fight to end oppression. I shall also know that he is fallible, and in need of the Grace of God, as am I and more so, for I am the worst of sinners.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Oh dear, I've just made a fool of myself over at Anglo-Catholic Central when I brought the attention of the 400 or so members to an article in this week's Church of England Newspaper which seemed to encourage composers of modern Church music not to think and compose meaningless trash, only to read it more carefully and see that it was actually criticising Modern church music and the whole ghastly "worship song" genre, by lampooning the inherent vapidity that modern songwriters think consitutes a good song to sing at Mass.

It's struck me that I have just behaved very much like so many religious folk around the world, in being far too reactionary without listening to the details carefully. This does seem to put me in line with the members of Christian Voice who criticised Jerry Springer: The Opera before they saw it, and, more recently with the Moslems reacting to the words of His Holiness, Pope Benedict.

It's easy to do. So what happened? I saw something which caught my eye, just a phrase which filled me with dread, a single sentence which touched a nerve, which for me was in the sensitive area of Church Music. So automatically I read looking for more bits to fuel the indignation, and it seems missing out the vital bits in which the author had said that he was satirising those who are presently diluting our liturgical music with meaninglessness.

Each of us has a raw area, and Anglo-Catholics are usually raw all over having been rejected from Anglicanism. It's something we have to expect, and consequently we leap (or at least I do) to defend our practices in a world which presses us to heresy. This leads me to wonder whether we need to defend ourselves so readily, and on such an intellectual level. Anglo-Catholicism is small in comparison with the Anglican Communion, but it is robust. We have the doctrines of the Catholic church which have lasted through centuries, and while there are good Catholics in the world, will always continue.

Anglo-Catholics have recently been accused of using too many words to defend themselves. Are we wasting our breath?

So what must I do in future. Be careful, is the answer, and don't react until I have fully comprehended the situation. Sometimes a wound stings from its own healing rather than from someone prodding it.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

I've just returned from the Diocesan Readers' Conference in which the key-mote speaker was the Rev'd Professor Gareth Lloyd-Jones from the University of Wales speaking on the Hebrew Scripture and how it describes the life of a people under the rule of an Empire.

He raised some very interesting issues, and many of them resonated with me and my near theological isolation in my community. There are just no other Tridentine Anglo-Papalists in this diocese of the Church of England. If you are one, let's do lunch. If you are also a priest, then let's do Mass! Widening the subdenomination to include the Anglo-Catholics (the proper ones, not the Affirming Catholicism syncretists), it's clear that we are in the minority here clinging onto what we have received and trying desparately to hold it as fully as possible. We follow the traditions in an empire of liberalism.

Listening to the Reverend Professor, I was reminded how it was Joseph, the favoured son of Jacob who unthinkingly engineered the oppression of his own people. It was he who sold sustenance to the folk for their money, then their cattle, and finally for their slavery. Did the Jews have a choice? It was one of their own people who, in conjunction with the state, took possession of the Hebrews as a commodity. Interestingly, it was the priests who remained largely untouched by the Egyptian resources takeover. In essence, the Egyptians through Joseph, bought the religion of the people.

Now, let's look here. The dominant empire in Britain (and in America too) is that of the Consumer Culture in which everything is regarded as a commodity, even workers. The Consumer Society seeks its pleasure using whatever means it can and will not stop at anything to consume it. In more unsavoury language (forgive me but I believe it to be the correct thing to say), ours is a culture of masturbation. It does not take delight in what it has, it seeks only more in order to scratch an itch. Our society cannot live with waiting, or constraint and it will sell all that it has in order to gain what it wants more immediately.

If this is the culture, then we in Blighty had better watch out because we already see the Established Church giving way to the rule of pleasure, the rule of individualism and the rule of "believe what you want" which is largely the creed of the Consumer Empire. We Anglo-Catholics are in pain and, like the Israelites, we cry out at every heresy that the Established church embraces, only to be told to "get a life" or "worry about more important things" or "we have to go with the flow". Those of us with firm principles are being branded "narrow-minded" (as if that were something unforgivable) or "fundamentalist" even though fundamentalism is the last thing that can be attributed to an Anglo-Catholic.

It was escaping from the Egyptian oppression that made the Hebrew society unique in the world for it was as a direct result that they found the comfort of the Decalogue, a stabilising structure of rules and ideas which gave them the support that they needed to live life in the sight of God.

We Anglo-Catholics have already within our minds and hearts and libraries the stabilising structure that we need within the Scripture and the Tradition. Just as the Decalogue is expanded and expounded in the Pentateuch for several chapters (several long chapters) likewise have our Scriptures and Tradition been expanded upon in every age by the Fathers of our Faith. We already have so much, but how are we using what we have? To squabble with one another, or to stand together in solidarity against the world which seeks to buy us and sell us as commodities?

It is the Decalogue that sets our Jewish brothers and sisters apart as people of God, what is it that separates us? How do we use it?

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

This is my first homily to the boys (and sixth-form girls) at Eltham College. Consequently, I've had to adapt my style slightly to make concessions for the youthful ear. Hope it doesn't offend you too much!Homily preached at Eltham College on 4th October 2006.

It is Harvest Festivalat St Philip’s Churchin the village ofLittle Flapjack-on-the-Turn,and,as is the custom for this time of year,the locals bring their produceinto the churchby way of givingthanks.

All this producegoes to the needy of the Parishand it is supposed to bethe best of the year's harvest.

In the old days,the church would be chock-full offruits and vegetables,bread and pastries.

These days,the church is more often fullof mouldy satsumas,bedraggled pumpkins,disappointed lettuces,and tins:tins of soup,tins of stewing steak,tins of potatoesand tin upon tin upon tinof baked beans.

Usually,the people who getthese tinned produceare the elderly.

But!

Old Mr Smith getsthe tins of stewing steak,and he hasn't a tooth in his head.

Mrs Bundock has lost her tin-opener.

And poor Mrs Murphy ends upwith all 365 tins of Baked Beansand as a result is bannedfrom leaving her housefor the rest of the yearin order to reducegreenhouse gasses.

She is releasedfrom this prisonat next year's Harvest Festivalwhen she receives another365 cansof baked beans.

Is giving tinsand mouldy fruitto a church Harvest Festivalan appropriate way of giving thanks forall that we receive?

Well, who wouldbe a good example of howto give thanks appropriately?

Today is St Francis' day,so how does he,St Francis of Assisigive thanks forall that he is given?

He does the Full Montyin front of a large crowd of peopleincluding a rather bemused Bishop!

Okay, so it's not precisely the Full Monty.

This is the 13th century,about 800 years beforeTom Jones records"You can leave your hat on".

Tom Jones himself is probablystill only a Welsh coal miner.

But St Francis strips offall his clothesto make a point.

His very rich fatherhas been telling himto stop wasting the family fortuneon the poor,and he brings himin front of the Bishopto threaten to disinheritSt Francis.

So St Francis reactsby literally giving up everythinghe owns,not just his possessions,but his clothes as well- everything.

All for the love of the poor.

St Francis lives to give freely,without grudging a penny,and this is how he gives thanks.

He has been given freely,so he gives freely,generously.

Possessions merelyweigh him down with thingsto look after and replace.

But doesn't it seem strangethat in order to give thanksfor what we do have,St Francis seems to tell usto give up everything?

Well, we mustn't followSt Francis too closely,otherwise the Headmaster will not be able to invitesenior members of the Clergyto Eltham Collegeagain.

Even the followers of St Francis- the Franciscans -go around correctly dressed.

But the root of the word "thanks"is the word "think", and to give thanksmeans to consider how much we have,and how we are using it.

We do needto look at our lives more closelyand strip awaythe surface of possessionsand material things.

What is it that we really need in our lives?

Do we really needthe new pair of Nike trainers,the new iPod, orthe new digital television set.

If we believe that we do,then who might benefitfrom the old ones that we had?

But if we do believethat we need new iPods, trainers, et c.is it because the old ones haveworn out or broken,or because they have goneout of fashion?

It can cost an awful lotto keep up with fashion.

If we have to havethe latest model,the newest edition,the most powerful version all the time,then surely we start spendingour time nervously scrutinisingthe shopping channels,hovering around Amazon.co.ukor grabbing at the Argos catalogues waiting for the new stuffto come out.

Is that any way to be living life?

Are dedicated followers of fashiontruly thankful for what they have,discarding perfectly good thingsfor the latest model?

So who really does enjoythe world we live in?

The Franciscan who owns nothingbut enjoys the beauty of the Earthfree from all the hassleof owning possessions,or those enslavedby every whimof fashion?